The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing.
Web conferencing has become a staple of enterprise collaboration permitting exchange of ideas and resources over geographically distant locations. Web conferencing technologies often include capabilities that permit real-time collaboration and remote log-in functionality. For example, desktop sharing can allow remote access and remote collaboration on a person's computer by a remote participant. Traditional web conferencing often can include a participant, such as a presenter, coordinating the conference. During conferences, a presenter often can be required to determine what content is to be transmitted and presented to other participants. Participants of a conference can receive selected content and can have no control over what content is being transmitted to their display devices. Further, when a participant views previously recorded presentations from a remote location, the participant can have no control over what content of the presentation is being transmitted to their display devices. That is, for cases in which multiple participants can access a web conference, each participant can have the same information transmitted to their display devices.
Several drawbacks of this approach arbitrarily limit participant control of received and presented content. In many cases, only certain portions of the presentation are relevant to a particular participant. That is, relevant portions of content within a presentation can differ from one participant to another participant. Consequently, each participant may be forced to view content that is relevant and content which can be irrelevant. This drawback can quickly become prevalent when a participant utilizes a display device that has a smaller screen. For example, smaller display devices often shrink the shared content to adequately present the content within the screen. Consequently, small display devices can make it difficult for a user to focus on the relevant shared content of the presentations and ignore the irrelevant content.
These drawbacks can exist even when the shared content is part of a single application. For example, many applications, for example some Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), include multiple windows presenting different information. Frequently, during a presentation, the relevant portion for a participant can be one window (e.g., editor window), but, for another participant, the relevant portion is another window of the same application (e.g., outline view). The result can be a confusing experience for one or more participants attempting to focus on relevant content.